原来黑猩猩也有口音

现在看来,黑猩猩似乎也有地方口音。科学家报告说,生活在非洲不同角落的幼年黑猩猩,叫声并不相同,而且随着这些动物年龄增长,这种差异还会进一步拉大。

Chimpanzees, it now appears, have regional accents. Scientists have reported that young chimpanzees living in different corners of Africa do not sound alike, and that the gap between them widens as the animals grow older.

研究团队分析了一万一千多段录音,来自两个地点的幼崽和未成年黑猩猩,一处是赞比亚的一家救助中心,另一处是坦桑尼亚的一座国家公园。他们把录音分成咕哝声、呜咽声和笑声,再逐一测量。最年幼的那些动物,不论来自哪里,叫声都大体相似。年龄较大的则不然:每个群体都各自形成了自己独特的咕哝方式。

The research team worked through more than eleven thousand recorded calls from infants and juveniles at two sites, a rescue centre in Zambia and a national park in Tanzania. They sorted the recordings into grunts, whimpers and laughter, then measured them. The youngest animals sounded broadly alike regardless of location. The older ones did not: each group had drifted toward its own particular manner of grunting.

这种分化正是最耐人寻味的地方,因为长期以来,人们一直认定黑猩猩的叫声是出生时就固定下来的,由动物本身的构造决定,而非从周围学来。如果一只幼年黑猩猩其实是在吸收周围群体的声音,就像一个孩子在无人特意教导的情况下,吸收了某条街道特有的元音一样,那么口音这件事,或许比任何人此前愿意承认的都要古老。

That drift is the arresting part, since chimpanzee calls were long presumed fixed at birth, encoded in the animal rather than absorbed from its neighbours. If a young chimpanzee is instead soaking up the sound of the group around it, much as a child absorbs the vowels of a particular street without being taught them, then accent may be an older habit than anyone had been prepared to admit.